My daughter kept nudging me in that “I told you so!” manner that was now becoming irritating. She wasn’t convincing me that she had been right so much than that these people were fools. The line extended well beyond my vision and at fifty dollars a ticket it yielded a small fortune that in my time would have enabled me to live far better than I had as a single mother with two kids. Well, I actually had a husband, or mate, but he spent most of his time on the prowl looking for large game, leaving me at home to keep the home fires burning. Keeping house was hard enough but I had the two most precocious kids ever born. While I was in the main part of the house cleaning, preserving and cooking large hunks of meat they took to their rooms and invented graffiti, scratching and painting on their bedroom walls and low hanging ceilings. Whenever I caught them I made them spend hours scraping off their art work, enduring their bellyaching about my stunting their creative juices and being short sighted. Now I was witnessing a preservation service restoring their art back to walls I had them clean, (not to successfully!), using mostly natural material my kids formulated out of whatever happened to be handy, charcoal from our fireplace, iron oxide, and ochre. I guess we should have written a how to book because they just aren’t getting the same results my babies did. These scribblings of animals and hunts, inspired by their dad’s stories, were drawn by five and six year olds! And people were paying to see them! For crying out loud, they never even had an art course and strangers were making money off of them. I deserved some of the royalties: they deserved some of the royalties, but I knew we’d never see a cent of the profits.

I mingled with the sightseers and listened in disbelief to their appreciation as they gazed at the paintings and so I stood back to reexamine them. Nope, they still looked juvenile to me. Surely these people could do better with crayons! I admit, as my kids aged their work improved but still they were reprimanded for drawing in the house and eventually found other places to be artistic, like under cliff over hangings, how ever, over the years the sun faded and the rains washed most of their illustrations of our lifestyle away, in our own lifetime. The only reason these cave-home pictures survived being rinsed away was we moved to better hunting grounds. We existed by following our food supply, or running from it! Traveling for us was easy since we only possessed the necessities, spears, crude tools, a blanket or two that had multi purposes as rain coats, sleeping mats, stretchers for the sick, make shift tents, a few crude bowls and our most valuable assets; each other. We all pitched in to relocate, no one was pampered and no one did all the work. Everything was done as a team. This era, people take each other so for granted. If only they needed each other for survival what would their perspectives be then?

My son brought my attention back to where a group had gathered to hear about our trash! Trash. I threw it away because that is what it was, trash, and these weirdoes were listening to a discussion about our eating habits, and..…excrements! These dopes definitely had too much time (and money) on their hands. I doubt I’d ever feel a desire to go through their landfills no matter how much time passed. Just how exactly does it benefit them to know this much about us? Are they trying to prepare for some cataclysmic disaster that would propel them back to the basics? We made life easier for this generation by our mistakes and successes, like the invention of the wheel and fire, at least that much was appreciated. Phew. If these people had to work to live maybe the line here wouldn’t be so long. The changes that have taken place over the years, unbelievably unbelievable!

Oh, my gosh. They found Aunt Maudy! They actually uncovered her and have her on display, her clothes have been partially destroyed by the unseen forces of decay and there she lays, for all to see. She was so modest I hope she never hears about this, it would kill her….again. Her skin is all leathery and her shrunken face looks horrific, though at the time it had a peaceful radiance to it. Her hair, mussed up now, has thinned and is in need of a good shampoo and conditioner. She’s curled in the fetal position we laid her to rest in with her hands clasped to her chest to resemble the rebirth from life to life. The transformation back to dust didn’t take place apparently due to the limestone surroundings we laid her remains to sleep in. When these folks are through parading Maudy around like a trophy of some lost time, they better not loose her body, she'll need it again someday. How would these Gawkers feel if we took their grandma and placed her under glass? I’d just like to give it a try, I understand grave robbing is illegal now. I‘d like to establish a grandfather clause on that!

Off to the side was “diorama” depicting someone’s idea of Maudy’s funeral. They had me standing there with a wooly mammoth fur hide* over my shoulders, correction over one shoulder leaving my opposite breast exposed. Was that necessary? Again, if this was one of the production crews mother would there have been more regard for modesty? Wait a minute, as I scrutinize my model I realize they made my human form better than reality…. Still, they should have been more respectful. And my husband! He never had that much hair on his head let alone his chest! And handsome! He wouldn't have had to club me and drag me off by my hair if he really had looked that good!

The intruders into our private, ancient lives are taking pictures and buying post cards of us as if we were somebody. We were just a family trying to get by. They called us something…Paleolithic? We just called ourselves lucky to survive! Wandering about wherever God led us, replenishing the earth and worshipping him the best we could since the “fall” when grandma Eve ruined it for us. Can’t blame her to much though, not having been there I can’t testify to what I would have done, no sense in pointing fingers, I hear that would cause three more digits to aim back at me!!! Yes I had four fingers and a thumb, and no I never swung from a tree, however, my husband’s brother…..oh, never mind, I mustn’t talk bad about the deceased! Thank heavens he was buried where he’d never be found, they'd claim he was the missing link!